The Inauguration from Down Under

Edwards: Inauguration from Down Under

THE RESPONSE to the inauguration of Barack Obama in Australia was ecstatic, indeed bordered on hysteria. Those of us with cable TV could catch the inauguration live on Fox, CNN, SKY, and the BBC. In Sydney, both the tabloid The Daily Telegraph and the more serious paper, The Australian (a Murdoch-owned publication), printed souvenir editions with dazzling photographs of the First Couple dancing together, discussions about the clothes worn by Mrs. Obama, and cartoons that bordered on the cultish. One cartoon had the couple waltzing on water with a bubble over the new president’s head stating, “This is nothing. Tomorrow I’m raising the economy from the dead.”

While the media here has copied the U.S. in its “Obama can do no wrong” coverage, there is another kind of agenda at work as well. Given Australia’s spotty record on race and its ongoing issues with the indigenous Aboriginal population, the idea that a person of color can become the leader of the free world is astonishing. Last year, the Australian government finally issued a formal apology to the Stolen Generations, those victims of the misguided resettlement policy of much of the twentieth century, which saw mixed race children torn from their non-white parent to be raised in white (often abusive) institutions.

Although the huge financial meltdown that is occurring in America and Britain has yet to reach Australia’s shores, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is now taking measures to ensure that the trickle-down effect won’t be too daunting here. Whether his measures will succeed only time will tell. Meanwhile, Obama coverage will keep the politicos on their toes and distract this nation from its own woes.

Australia-born Lee MacCormick Edwards is an art historian and writer. Her books include Domestic Bliss: Family Life in American Painting, 1840-1910 and Herkomer: A Victorian Artist. She resides in Sydney and New York.